Table Of ContentA History of the French Language through Texts
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A History of the French Language
through Texts
Wendy Ayres-Bennett
London and New York
First published 1996
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.
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© 1996 Wendy Ayres-Bennett
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would be
glad to hear from any who have not been traced.
The author asserts the moral right to be identified
as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-98673-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-09999-4 (hb)
ISBN 0-415-10000-3 (pb)
Contents
List of symbols viii
List of figures x
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
I The language of the earliest texts (AD 842 to the end of the 11th
century) 13
1 The Strasbourg Oaths (842): the earliest vernacular text 13
2 The Sequence of Saint Eulalia (c. 880–82) 27
3 Extract from the Bilingual Sermon on Jonah (c. 937–52) 36
4 La Vie de Saint Alexis (mid-11th century) 40
II The ‘heyday’ of Old French (French in the 12th and 13th centuries) 51
5 La Chanson de Roland (early 12th century) 52
6 Le Chevalier de la charrette (c. 1177–81) 59
7 Le Jeu de saint Nicolas (c. 1200) 62
8 The Old French Bible (first half of the 13th century) 64
9 Geoffroy de Villehardouin, The Conquest of Constantinople
(early13th century) 69
10 The Lettre d’Hippocrate (mid-13th century) 72
11 Donation testamentaire (1239) 76
12 Lettre de Jean Sarrasin à Nicolas Arrode (23 June 1249) 81
III Middle French (French in the 14th and 15th centuries) 85
13 Cent nouvelles nouvelles (mid-15th century) 86
14 Alain Chartier, Le Quadrilogue invectif (1422) 92
15 Le Testament Villon (mid-15th century) 97
16 La Farce de Maître Pathelin (mid-15th century) 102
17 Le Menagier de Paris (end of the 14th century) 105
18 Land sale, 23 May 1380 109
19 Nicolas Chuquet, Le Triparty en la science des nombres
(late15th century) 112
20 La Manière de langage (end of the 14th century) 115
vi Contents
IV Renaissance French (French in the 16th century) 119
21 François Rabelais, Gargantua (1534) 120
22 Michel de Montaigne, Essais (1588) 126
23 Jean Calvin, Institution de la religion chrestienne (1541) 129
24 Robert Olivétan’s translation of the Bible (1535) 132
25 Ambroise Paré, La Methode de traicter les playes
faictes par hacquebutes et aultres bastons à feu (1545) 134
26 André Thevet, Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique (1557/8) 140
27 Louis Meigret, Le de la
(1550) 143
V Classical and Neo-Classical French (French in the 17th and 18th
centuries up to the Revolution) 150
28 Claude Favre de Vaugelas, Remarques sur la langue françoise
(1647) 151
29 François de Sales, Introduction à la vie dévote (early 17th century) 158
30 Voltaire, Candide (1759) 162
31 Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons
dangereuses (1782) 166
32 Jean Racine, Britannicus (1669) 171
33 Mercure de France (1732) 173
34 Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau and François Quesnay,
Philosophie rurale ou économie générale et politique de
l’agriculture (1763/4) 177
35 J ean Héroard’s record of the Dauphin’s speech
(early17th centur y) 180
36 French in the world: an early example of Haitian Creole
(mid-18th century) 185
VI Modern French (From the Revolution to the present day) 192
37 Michel Tournier, Gaspard, Melchior & Balthazar (1980) 193
38 Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856/7) 198
39 Robert Desnos, Langage cuit (1923) 201
40 Le Monde (13.4.1961): Gagarin in space 202
41 Annales de l’Institut Pasteur. Microbiologie (1986) 206
42 Decree of the National Assembly, 20 July 1790 209
43 Jacques Cellard, Chroniques de langage (1972) 211
44 Regional French: Spoken Midi French 215
45 Antonine Maillet, La Sagouine (1971) 220
Contents vii
Appendix I: Summary of main linguistic features 227
Appendix II: Glossary of selected technical terms and guide to the sounds of
Modern French 239
Appendix III:Suggestions for further reading
243
References 245
Symbols
> : ‘becomes’
< : ‘comes from’
* : placed before a word indicates that the form is unattested; this may be a form
posited on the basis of evidence such as comparative data from other Romance
languages.
